


Loving Beyond

by TheChronic



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Good Sibling Luther Hargreeves, Good Sibling Number Five | The Boy, Good Sibling Vanya Hargreeves, Loving people with trauma, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Number Five | The Boy Whump, Number Five | The Boy has PTSD, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Luther Hargreeves, Stabbing, Trauma, Vanya Hargeeeves Whump, Vanya Hargreeves Needs A Hug, but no smut, dream state, fiveya - Freeform, implied fiveya if you're into it, loving beyond the ugly, some violence, unintentional harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:01:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28456497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheChronic/pseuds/TheChronic
Summary: Dealing with the trauma was always difficult... panic bloomed on his features as he turned on a dime and blinked through every room in the house before the first pill, rolling loose from the brown apothecary canister, had time to roll off the kitchen surface and hit the floor.Short Five & Vanya whump. Because no one gets off scot-free. The most loving relationships are the ones that can bear the ugly and look beyond it.
Relationships: Luther Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Luther Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Vanya Hargreeves
Kudos: 25





	Loving Beyond

**Author's Note:**

> Also because I think the expectation of trauma tolerance outside of the adrenaline of the series is way too high for these poor and much beloved characters.
> 
> May you all find love and support like this in your lives.

Dealing with the trauma was always difficult.

Strolling into the kitchen with an unusually upbeat “honey I’m home” demeanour Five slapped his bag onto the surface. His good mood evaporated instantly; panic bloomed on his features as he turned on a dime and blinked through every room in the house before the first pill, rolling loose from the brown apothecary canister, had time to roll off the kitchen surface and hit the floor.

She had made it as far as the bedroom before collapsing on the floor in a brace position – ass in the air, fingers linked tightly behind her head, forehead pressed to the floor. Sobbing.

He hooked his hands under her armpits and pulled her up into a sitting position. Pushing her back against the wall he kneeled between her legs and rubbed the top of her arms, hoping the touch would soothe. She covered her face with her own hands.

“Why didn’t you call?”

She keened behind closed palms, began to bang her head against the wall. Short nails dug into her eyelids.

“Stop. Tell me what happened.”

She didn’t answer. Couldn’t. He lifted tentative fingers to touch her skin but thought better of it. Frustrated, he sat back against the opposite wall with a sigh. Whatever it was, it was bad, but there were so many triggers that it was barely worth trying to guess what set the attack off. She may have taken the pills to protect others as much as to protect herself. It could get exotic. Topical thunderstorms and lightning strikes inside the house as the energy blew out of her and out of control. Rooms deluged and soaked, furniture ruined, electricity blown out.

She was doing a good job of containing whatever storm was raging inside but he knew from previous experience how much it was hurting. He had grabbed a hold of her once - as a gale force wind had howled around the room, sending papers flying and ripping picture frames off the wall - and felt through the skin of his palm the blistering power of her emotions. It had sent him spinning, crashing backwards onto the floor. He had been careful not to repeat that mistake. Feeling her like that, in the throes of agony, was the most painful thing he had ever experienced in her company.

He tipped his face to the ceiling, felt the cool plaster of the wall snag the hair on the back of his head, and considered what needed to be done. After a moment he leaned forward and heaved her awkwardly across the distance between them, limp as a ragdoll and heavy as a bag of rocks. He encircled her with his arms and crossed his ankles over her sprawling legs, cradling her into his body. He laid her head against his chest, ear pressed to ribs so that she could hear his heartbeat. She had said once that when she could hear his heart beating, it drowned out the dogged noise of her own. That her heartbeat would slow and follow his because it was wise enough to know what it wanted.

He dropped a kiss onto the crown of her head and then rested his chin on that same spot, holding her, waiting as the wind begin to rise around them for the storm to blow itself out.

\----

He could hardly claim to be better. There were still nights where he was so strung out that he drank until he was dead drunk, and she scooped him up and manoeuvred him somewhere safe, nursing him even as he raged and swore and hurled insults until he passed out. Although those nights seemed to grow further apart, the shame of them – the blurred memories of some of the things he had said to her in that state stabbing unbidden into focus the following day – ploughed a deep furrow through his sense of self-worth.

At least those nights he did sleep, and the hurt was only words. Worse were the nights when he was sober but trapped in his own dreams: he had woken from one such to a shriek of pain. He thrashed into consciousness, vision returning through the murky dark of deep night to discover that they were not in their rooms but in the library and the hand holding the slim stiletto causing her anguished cry was his own. The tip of the knife was embedded in the ball of her shoulder; a pearling bead of black blood shone in the moonlight against her pale, bare arm as it began to dribble from the wound. He looked from the streak it left to her eyes, her pupils blown wide with shock. Her other arm was extended, fingertips resting lovingly on his cheek.

He understood as he felt the cool callouses that she had been trying to wake him.

Luther was standing frozen on the other side of the library, distress writ large across his face. In three steps he crossed the open space and wrenched Five’s hand from the knife, lifted him bodily into the air and snarled in his face. Discombobulated and twisting in mid-air like badly hung laundry, it had been as much as Five could do to yell “I’m awake!” repeatedly to convince his brother to release him. Once Luther had freed him from his monstrous grip – letting Five fall painfully back onto the floor - it was explained to him that he had been blinking from room to room with a knife in his hand burbling incoherently about finding someone and killing her. They hadn’t been able to wake him by shouting or banging on furniture - which had just driven him into an higher state of frenzy - so she had crept close and tried to jog his body out of it by touch. His reaction had been swift, and violent.

It had caused him many sleepless nights since, thinking how close that slim blade had been to her heart; her own treasured heartbeat. The clumsy, glancing blow was sheer luck, for both of them. He hadn’t slept in the mansion since, blinking out after everyone was abed and waking early to return before they realised he was gone.

At least, he hoped they hadn’t realised. They spoke to one another of the things that caused these disturbed states of being, sharing with each other what no one else could bear to hear. But they did not speak about that.


End file.
